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So the Hugo Awards were last night, and, as many of you no doubt already know, the Puppies went down in defeat.

For those who haven’t been following the ongoing culture war in the world of science fiction, a group of cultural reactionaries decided to try to strike a blow against what they see as the Social Justice Warriorization of the SF world by essentially stuffing the ballot boxes for the Hugo Award nominations with two slates of their own candidates, dubbed the Sad and the Rabid Puppies. They succeeded in this ignoble task, with many of the categories in the final ballot filled entirely with writers put forward by one or the other of the Puppy slates.

But there’s one peculiar thing about the Hugo ballots: if you don’t like any of the nominees, you can vote for “no award” instead.

And last night, that’s what everyone fed up with the Puppies did. In the five categories where all the nominees were Puppy-nominated, voters picked “no award” over all of them. The only Puppy-endorsed winner? Guardians of the Galaxy, which was such a charmingly entertaining popcorn flick that it transcended Puppy politics altogether

Naturally, the Puppies and their supporters claimed … victory? Well some of them did, anyway.

Doesn't the super-villain always set off the self-destruct when his underground lair is overrun by heroes? Just a thought. #HugoAwards

Meanwhle, Vox Day — the famously reactionary, racist, woman-hating fantasy author who headed up the Rabid Puppies — tried to spin the giant loss as a sort of nihilistic victory for the forces of reactionary chaos.

In his first blog post about the results of the Hugo votes, Day managed to sort of admit that the Puppies had, yes, failed. Of those voting for “no award,” Day wrote,

They are practicing a scorched earth strategy, and we can certainly assist them in that since we do not value their territory. I still think it was worth trying to take Berlin and end the war in one fell swoop, but even though our attempt break them once and for all failed, that only means that the victory was less than complete.

But in later posts he banished the f-word and tried to convince the world, like Pee Wee Herman after his famous bicycle spill in Pee Wee’s Great Adventure, that he’d “meant to do that.”

It’s fascinating to see SJWs desperately trying to cling to their Narrative on Twitter and elsewhere. They’re insisting that we’re mad, that we’re crying, that we’re upset, when the fact is that I knew this would be the result this year prior to creating Rabid Puppies.

That’s what really pisses in my cornflakes: the two guys organizing the Sad Puppies, Correia and Torgersen, have enjoyed plenty of success and praise for their work. If anything, they’ve been over-lauded for the decent but unexceptional middle-of-the-road fiction they put out. Before the Puppies nonsense, Torgersen was nominated for a Hugo and they were both nominated for the Campbell (the Best New Writer award given out at the Hugos).

They just didn’t win.

Correia and Torgersen have been welcomed, praised, petted, and showered with money by the evil liberal SF community, considerably more than they deserve for their middling level of talent. But they weren’t instantly crowned the second and third coming of Robert Heinlein, with all the liberals and women and gays apologizing in tears for trying to write science fiction when such literary giants walked the earth, so they chose to throw a massive years-long tantrum.

If you want to throw up in your mouth, look up Correia’s rant about how being nominated for the Campbell in his first year as a published author, but not winning, ruined his entire first Worldcon and convinced him of the Social Justice Warrior conspiracy against him. Because there could be no other explanation for a nobody like Lev Grossman beating him. (And Torgersen lost to a woman! A woman!)

Dammit, I write awesome SF stories and I’d be bowled over to be “only” nominated for a friggin’ Hugo Award. Eff those guys.

As someone who roadie’d his way through law school and used to do a lot of sound engineering, can I just point out that it’s *really* bad for the microphones. Seriously, it just buggers up the capsules and dents the screens (which can have the effect of making them more prone to feedback).

I’m not a huge SF/F reader, so I don’t know what the general quality of prose in the field is like these days. But reading these quotes makes me hope that the Ancient Egyptians got it right with what happens after you’re dead, because it means that even if, for some reason, their hearts didn’t weigh so much that they’d get gobbled up immeditely, Thoth would be around.

ANUBIS: Well, looks like your heart is just balanced with the feather. That’s a draw, so I suppose we can let you through…
THOTH: Hmm, Anubis, mate. Have you seen what they did to the written language?
ANUBIS: That’s your area, not mine. I have no opinion.
THOTH: Yeah, well… *tosses the collected works of VD onto the side of the scale with his heart. The heart sinks under the weight of his prose.*
AMMIT: *Gobble gobble gobble*

You folks clearly have a good working knowledge of sci-fi so perhaps you can assist.

When I was a kid I read those old Pan Books Horror anthologies. There was a series of them.

One of the stories was about some illness that started spreading. Essentially it turned people into jelly. It really creeped me out as a kid. Does anyone have any idea of what the story/author might have been?

The most horrifying thing about Twilight, for those of us who appreciate good writing, is that moment when you discover that there was an editor. Meyer thanks her (I think it was a her) for making her writing so much better. What got published was the best the editor could do with the original. The idea of what that must have been like is enough to give nightmares.

Yet many people who think Correia and Torgersen suffered grave injustices would be outraged to hear someone suggest that there’s a problem with too many unoriginal or good-but-not-great works getting award nominations. And it has nothing to do with authors’ political views.

The most horrifying thing about Twilight, for those of us who appreciate good writing, is that moment when you discover that there was an editor. Meyer thanks her (I think it was a her) for making her writing so much better. What got published was the best the editor could do with the original. The idea of what that must have been like is enough to give nightmares.

Honestly, I used to think Twilight was bad, and then I heard about 50 Shades of Grey. The fact that it was (and continues to be) a bad Twilight knockoff (and very, very proud of the fact that it used to be Twilight fanfiction) boggles my mind.

At least New Moon was somewhat decent. If only for the lack of Edward whinging and being an all around piece of garbage until the very end of the book. (Yes I did read the first three books, no I’m not proud of that, and yes the movies are better, if only because they take you out of Bella’s headspace.)

If anyone wants a good Twilight substitute, I would highly reccomend The Tantalize Series by Cynthia Leitich Smith, which is a really awesome supernatural young adult romance series. The second one, Eternal, is my favorite. I cried at the end. (And there’s a really hilarious bit about angels and cherub tattoos that never fails to make me giggle like mad.)

The series is also written by a Native American woman, if you want to get off the Cishet white male author train.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but my memory’s kind of shitty, so it might not have been to you guys directly.

And if you guys would like to get good books cheap, I reccomend ThriftBooks.com. 😀 (I got all of the Tantalize books there in gently-used hardcover for like twenty bucks.)

I also enjoy Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles for some quality angsting vamps. Although I freely admit those books are flawed, they’re a million times better than Twilight I’m sure.

Actually. Scratch that. Carmilla is also good for teen and vampire romance. Funny that a conservative patriarchal type author like Stephanie Meyer got big writing vampire romance fiction when the whole sexy vampire genre began (as far as I know anyway) with a story that was very obvious with the lesbian subtext.

Sexy vampires technically start with Lord Ruthven, who’s the ultimate Alpha, what with being based on Lord Byron and all. There are a few other interesting ones, like Clarimonde (aka the Dead Lover) and some macho-macho-alphas, but yeah, Carmilla is pretty much the ultimate goto. LeFanu wrote great teenage girls, including in his other books. I find it fascinating how even though he’s basically on the side of Victorian patriarchs, he writes his female characters well enough from their point of view that you can see how that would be oppressive. (That’s not very well expressed, sorry.)

WWTH: I’d probably argue the origins of “The Sexy Vampire” in modern SFF is Saberhagen. He wrote two stories about Dracula, which then morphed into a series in the modern day (I lost the plot with the third, or fourth, of the modern set stories).

The Dracula Tapes is brilliant. It’s a fisking of Stoker (pointing out all the plot holes and inconsistencies, from Dracula’s POV). The Holmes Dracula File is a pretty good story, and also stands alone. It’ good for both Dracula, and Holmes.

The modern stories, where the magical/sexy aspect start to show up is “An Old Friend of the Family”. I recall there was at least one more before “Merlin” which is where I bounced.

One of the stories was about some illness that started spreading. Essentially it turned people into jelly. It really creeped me out as a kid. Does anyone have any idea of what the story/author might have been?

As I always enjoy a good Googling, does “Men Without Bones”, by Gerald Kersh ring a bell? It was in the Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories, and though it doesn’t exactly deal with a disease, it does have jelly-like people.

If not, I found Pandaemonian – a blog which has summaries of all of the stories contained within the different volumes.

Just in time for his ignominious defeat comes Theodore Beale’s latest travesty SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police.

Social Justice Warriors have plagued mankind for more than 150 years, but only in the last 30 years has their ideology become dominant in the West. Having invaded one institution of the cultural high ground after another, from corporations and churches to video games and government, there is nowhere that remains entirely free of their relentless thought and speech policing.

The book is named after the First Law of SJW: SJWs always lie. SJWs ALWAYS LIE is a useful guide to understanding, anticipating, and surviving SJW attacks from the perspective of a man who has not only survived, but thrived, after experiencing multiple attempts by Social Justice Warriors to disqualify, discredit, and disemploy him in the same manner they have successfully attacked Nobel Laureates, technology CEOs, broadcasters, sports commentators, school principals, and policemen. It analyzes well-known SJW attacks as well as the two most successful examples of resistance to the SJW Narrative, #GamerGate and Sad Puppies.

Written by Vox Day, Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil and featuring a foreword by Milo Yiannopoulos, SJWs ALWAYS LIE is a powerful weapon in the cultural war against the thought police.

Indeed, Sad Puppies was such a great resistance against social justice that people overwhelmingly voted for no winners in protest of them and then went to work coming up with ways to prevent this from ever happening again and likely destroyed any credibility Trogersen and Correia had. Smashing job there, Puppies.

Social Justice Warriors have plagued mankind for more than 150 years, but only in the last 30 years has their ideology become dominant in the West. Having invaded one institution of the cultural high ground after another, from corporations and churches to video games and government, there is nowhere that remains entirely free of their relentless thought and speech policing.

Snark answer: Wow, we “SJWs” have done pretty fucking well considering that the bigot patrol only came up with that dumbass name for us last year. Good to know the time travellers of the world are on our side.

Serious answer: Abraham Lincoln died exactly 150 years ago and that’s not a coincidence. Abraham bloody Lincoln was the first “SJW” to this twit. Struth almighty.

The book is named after the First Law of SJW: SJWs always lie. SJWs ALWAYS LIE is a useful guide to understanding, anticipating, and surviving SJW attacks from the perspective of a man who has not only survived, but thrived, after experiencing multiple attempts by Social Justice Warriors to disqualify, discredit, and disemploy him in the same manner they have successfully attacked Nobel Laureates, technology CEOs, broadcasters, sports commentators, school principals, and policemen. It analyzes well-known SJW attacks as well as the two most successful examples of resistance to the SJW Narrative, #GamerGate and Sad Puppies.

Isn’t it convenient that VD and his ilk just assume anyone against them is “always lying”? It’s almost like that’s a convenient excuse for them not to listen to anything anyone else has to say!

The book is named after the First Law of SJW: SJWs always lie. SJWs ALWAYS LIE is a useful guide to understanding, anticipating, and surviving SJW attacks from the perspective of a man who has not only survived, but thrived, after experiencing multiple attempts by Social Justice Warriors to disqualify, discredit, and disemploy him in the same manner they have successfully attacked Nobel Laureates, technology CEOs, broadcasters, sports commentators, school principals, and policemen. It analyzes well-known SJW attacks as well as the two most successful examples of resistance to the SJW Narrative, #GamerGate and Sad Puppies.

Well. If THAT’s not a textbook example of why you should never play chess with a pigeon, I don’t know what is. Because that is some primo pigeon-knocking-over-the-chesspieces-and-shitting-on-the-board-before-strutting-away stuff, right there.

one institution of the cultural high ground after another, from corporations and churches to video games and government

Ok, none of those are actually high culture and I’m genuinely shocked he didn’t mention universities since we know the left ruined American higher education ages ago. Also, Beale is clearly not done wooing the Gamergate crowd because that’s the only way to explain why video games makes a very short list of key social institutions.

Did Milos GG book actually happen? He’d better hurry up, his potential reading pool is shrinking and very soon will only contain the hardcore malcontents who make endless streams of anti-Sarkeesian Youtube videos.

How cute, he’s trying to create a catchphrase that captures the cartoon villainy of the imaginary SJWs. I was he’s pliable fans would be pushing this but a google search suggests it’s not going any farther than his book title.

This are so childish, even for Beale. Do these useless blanket statements somehow make him feel superior? I guess they might, Beale strikes me as the epitome of the Very Smart debater, who seemingly never recognizes that they’re pretty bad at making useful and compelling arguments.

Under the current rules, any paid-up member of Worldcon can nominate anything they please, and what goes on the ballot for Category X is whichever five items got the greatest number of nominations, modulo some caveats about ties, eligibility, yada yada. It’s pure ‘first past the post’, really.

As long as all the nominators are picking things they love, it works great… and nominations are pretty diffuse. But one consequence of ‘first past the post’ balloting is that a small number of disciplined nominators—a slate—can easily grant a higher number of nominations to slated items, than the whole pool of diffuse nominators. If you’ve got, say, 5,000 people whose nominations are semi-randomly distributed across 5,000 different works, it’s not at all unreasonable that a cabal of, say, 200 slate nominators

If you’ve got 5,000 people who, collectively, nominate a grand total of 5,000 different works, it could well be that none of those 5,000 works gets more than maybe 100-200 total nominations. Well, what happens if a group of 250 people get together, and agree that every member of the group must nominate exactly the same works? Answer: That group of 250 people will end up with all the nominations.

In short, slates are a fairly obvious problem for this ‘first past the post’ protocol for nominations. Fortunately, SF fandom-at-large has always been very opposed to slates; until recently, it was clear that any slate-maker would forevermore be regarded as That Asshole—and nobody wanted to be That Asshole.

Enter: Larry Correia, Brad Torgersen, and Theodore Beale. As it happens, all three of these men were, and are, okay with being That Asshole.

And that’s how the Pups did it: They exploited a known flaw in the Hugo Awards nomination protocols.

When I see someone on the Christian right ranting about “more than 150 years”, I think of the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859. I don’t think of Darwin as much of an SJW, but who knows? The modern right often seems to smoosh their enemies into one big ball of bad.

That was just the smoke from the wildfires, from which we still don’t have any relief. (hack, wheeze, whine) Given conditions on the Friday of Worldcon, where visibility was down to about a block, I can understand how someone could get confused.

I’m personally an aspiring SF writer (not far beyond fanfiction, truth be told) and the thing I’m currently working on has all the hallmarks of what the reactionary right-wing fandom would love: Imperialism, vague religion and faux-intellectual reasoning for the superiority of man, militarism, hard science, and an overriding space opera.

Except the two main characters are male homosexuals and I (subtly) present it as a horrible place to live.

The amusing thing is the No Award proved the invalidity of the Canes depubes thesis.

1: The ballots were controlled by a cabal.
2: The Cabal limited the choice for the actual awards.
3: If the works “Fans really like” were placed on the ballot they would win.

So they got together and brigaded the balloting (arguing it was the only way to put works the fans “really” live in front of them because the cabal [or maybe just the Grand High Poobah, Patrick Nielsen, who did all himself; for the past couple of decades] was “already doing it”) and presented the fans with “good works of the sort they want”.

And the fans talked about it, and argued about it, and the consensus was, by and large, that slates are bad, no matter who puts them up. The idea was so anathema to so many fans that more than have ever taken part in the Hugo voting took part.

And the WSFS business meeting (where the rules of the Hugos, nominating, balloting, awarding, etc, are determined) had to be expanded to hash out ways to address the concerns of the community.

The community is not unanimous in its take on what the best solution is, but No Award to slates (and active non-participation by lots of authors/artists/fanwriters) seems to be solid enough that slating will be a death knell until the proposed patches can be ratified into effect.

So their may be one more year of Canes depubes slating leading to No Awarding a lot of things, but I don’t think it will be more than that.

We Hunted the Mammoth tracks and mocks the white male rage underlying the rise of Trump and Trumpism. This blog is NOT a safe space; given the subject matter -- misogyny and hate -- there's really no way it could be.